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Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Well, alright. Not right now, eggsactly, but somewhere between pulling on a cigarette and banging on this keyboard.

The still life looking west along the river is cast in grey. If it were not for the ever incipient rain I might describe it as ashen.

I got up this morning to make a toilet trip in the dark and guessed it to be 4 or 5 AM. It was 7:28. My alarm went off before I got one foot back into bed. I am glad I no longer work the night shift. I am glad I have not been forced to so for close to a decade. Cursing under my breath and lurching this way and that like a drugged hippo, I admit I felt bad for those habitually compelled to rise well before dawn: postmen; bus drivers; bakers and janitors. Schoolchildren with their hair on end chasing the milk round.

All manner of early risers and the plain nocturnal.

We are not designed to withstand such abuse. There is no benefit beyond the monetary in turning night into day or defying the biological clock. Unless it be to get the jump on the assassin creeping down one's hall; blade drawn and knotted with resolve. Fight or flight, in short.

Empirical evidence points incontrovertibly to the negative impact on long term health engendered through the night shift. I am aware of a handful of scientific papers which attest to as much; none commissioned in China - I am given to understand - the tiger which has forgotten how to sleep. At the mercy of party stimulants, restlessly pacing, its veins have all collapsed.

Still. Nobody lasts too long in China anyway. Serf or emperor, prole or government official.Leaving aside the fact that the Chinese have demonstrated a knack for sewing a silk purse out of a pig's ear and making chicken noodle soup out of what's left, there is little on their agenda that one might seriously want to emulate. We are already drowning in our own pollution. We don't need any tips.This brings me back to the dread I experienced when I stirred to find my morning snoring. Everything is back to front.

I've only worked a handful of night shifts in my entire working life but I've always been, strangely, facinated by the idea of working while others sleep. Apart from a previous employ I've always been forced to work the days, the evenings but never the nights.Mind you this far north, from about now until late February I go to work in the dark and return home in the dark.